Has anyone made a joke about the winners getting quite a buzz out of it? No one would possibly demean themselves so.

My best photograph: Mars rover Curiosity's shot of the hill she'll never climb

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No, quite right. Umm … who were the other successful applicants? Spider droid makers? Nano bird builders? Ooh – is someone making centipedes with little boots on? That’s not high-tech – I just really want to see it. Other proposals that made the cut include a steam-powered jumping robot.

I’m sorry, what? One minute we’re talking about futuristic bee-bots, the next we’re in a Victorian fever dream. It will be perfectly designed to traverse icy ocean surfaces such as that of Saturn’s moon, Titan, thought to be the most likely harbourer of extraterrestrial life.

So it’s not a film I’ve seen, but I bet Pixar’s on it. What else is in development? A biobot that will enable astronauts to spend longer on the red planet and a shapeshifting robot.

I’m gonna need to know a little more about that last one. Oh, it’s simple – it becomes a ball when it needs to roll over ground, a flying thing when it needs to be airborne and torpedo-shaped when it hits liquid.

What a time to be alive! Let’s hope. Everything will be fine. Almost certainly, everything will be fine.

Do say: “I will develop this robot with the utmost care and build in a variety of protective fail-safes.”